Latest Reviews - Page 17

River City Ransom — or Street Gangs as it was known upon release in Europe — is arguably one of the most famous fighting titles for Nintendo's 8-bit NES console. Ported from the Japanese Famicom title Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari, the game combined the pugilistic focus of Double Dragon (which was created by the same company, Technōs...

Bike Rider DX doesn't have much in the way of exposition. It looks like a simple game, and it is: players guide a constantly-advancing cyclist through different stages, using a single button to jump over obstacles, pitfalls, and enemies on the way to the goal. This certainly isn't a new idea, but it wraps it up in a polished package...

It’s been just over a month since G.Rev’s Kokuga hit the 3DS eShop, and now we’re already being treated to another shoot ‘em up with the release of G-Style’s Chain Blaster. Though shoot ‘em ups have been few and far between since the home console took over the industry and put countless arcades out of...

Undead Bowling isn’t the typical ten frames of bowling that you’re used to. There are no spares or strikes, no gutters or pins, and no fungus-laden shoes or hairstyles leftover from the '70s – but you do knock things down with a bowling ball…a bowling ball of doom, that is. And actually, “knock” isn’t an appropriate...

Just over 11 years since its original release in 2002, Shantae has finally made it onto the 3DS Virtual Console – and it's the first time that it's been available in Europe too. Despite the long wait, WayForward's tricky 2D platformer is sprinkled with enough genie-magic to keep it fresh and interesting for a modern audience.
Shantae...

After two games on the DSiWare service, Teyon's Robot Rescue series, famous for fiendishly difficult maze puzzles and a unique synchronized movement mechanic, has made the jump to the 3DS eShop with this latest instalment, Robot Rescue 3D. Rather than an entirely new entry in the series, Robot Rescue 3D is a...

Both DSiWare and the 3DS eShop have seen their share of sim games, managing a variety of businesses, creatures and a combination of both. My Farm 3D is the latest in a series that delivered a few budget priced options on DSiWare, some playing it straight and others being more off-the-wall. Aside from the odd quirky moment this latest...

Level-5 saved the best for last in its final Guild02 release with Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale. Designed by Kaz Ayabe, this is a short, very sweet interactive story about a little boy who lives in a small town where mysterious monsters appear on Friday afternoons. The game takes place in rural Tokyo in...

Ask a few western gamers about Spelunker and it's likely that barely any of them will have heard of the game, despite it being originally developed by an American company. Ask Japanese gamers, though, and it's a completely different story — the game is very well known to them and is joked about online all the...

By now we all know the story of Super Mario Bros. 2: concerns about the Japanese sequel to the original Super Mario Bros. kept it from release in North America and Europe. Different reasons have been given over time, from the game being too difficult to it simply not demonstrating enough creativity to keep gamers...

Is there something about the 3DS that screams out to developers that it just might be the ideal platform for arcade shooters? Maybe it’s the 3D effect that adds simulated depth to in-game environments, or maybe it’s the touchscreen which is seemingly built for aiming a crosshair? Whatever the case may be, the 3DS has seen at least a...

Quite a few video game mascots got swept up in the kart racing craze of the 90's, and the world's fastest hedgehog was no exception. Sonic and racing have always seemed like a good fit, and after the success of Super Mario Kart in 1992, SEGA gave the Blue Blur some well-deserved time on the track with Sonic Drift for the Game...

Around its initial release in the early '90s, Sega launched G-LOC: Air Battle in several different forms, including an arcade cabinet, a Mega Drive port, and eventually crash-landing it on the portable Game Gear console. The series has been mostly absent since then, finally popping back up on the 3DS’s Virtual Console service. Some...

If you’ve never been exposed to a hidden object game before, the concept is as simple to understand as a youthful game of I spy or finding Waldo hidden within the pages of a Where’s Waldo? book. Imagine your bedroom is contained in a snow globe. Someone takes it, shakes it for a minute or two, sets it down, and at that...

Given its gothic setting, focus on melee combat and inclusion of Dracula as the final boss, it’s little wonder that Vampire: Master of Darkness was compared to the famous Castlevania series when it launched on the Master System and Game Gear back in the early ‘90s. Developed by SIMS — which at the time was a second-party Sega...

One of the Game Gear's earliest RPG titles, Crystal Warriors tries to cherry-pick the best elements of genre classics like Fire Emblem and Shining Force while throwing its own element-driven combat system into the mix, along with the ability to tame monsters and use them in battle. Despite these attempts to do something fresh...

What is Urban Trial Freestyle? The best way we can think to describe it would be a physics-based platformer – any of you familiar with the Trials series on XBLA should know what to expect here. Think of a 2D sidescroller like Mario, but instead of running around, you’re on a bike, zipping in-and-out of ramps and onto...

There is so much that can be said about the legacy that Kokuga brings with it to the 3DS. We can talk about the illustrious Hiroshi Iuchi, and how his work is seminal is shaping the modern shoot ‘em up genre, or we can talk about Ikaruga, the under-sold yet much adored bullet hell shooter that fans will remember fondly. Instead...

When Zordix announced that it was bringing a smartphone jet-ski title to the 3DS eShop with Aqua Moto Racing 3D, we suspect that quite a few people immediately let their minds drift to certain iconic Nintendo 64 and GameCube games, and applied those expectations to this download title. That would be unfair, but this release still tries...

A year after the runaway success of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991, SEGA followed up with a sequel that introduced Miles 'Tails' Prower and the iconic Casino Night Zone to the gaming world. This, however, is not that sequel. Rather than leaving its Master System and Game Gear-owning fans with a simple, downsized port of Sonic the...